"'Well,' he said, when I appeared, 'what do you want?'
"'I want a job,' I answered.
"He was so taken aback at this that he hardly knew what to say for a minute. Then he told me that everything in the company was taken.
"'Oh, I don't want a regular part,' I explained. 'Just a chance to go on and work my way up.'
"'Oh, an extra man,' he said. 'I haven't anything to do with engaging those. You will have to see my stage manager about that.'
"I kept mum as an oyster about having already had an interview with that gentleman, and never turned a hair while Mr. Gillette took out his card and wrote on it an introduction to this individual for me. With this I went back to the Garrick, and handed it in with a lordly air; the stage manager thought it meant an order from Gillette to put me on, and he forthwith proceeded to dismiss some poor duffer he had already engaged, and put me on in his place at eight dollars a week.
Selwyn's Varied Make-Ups.
"Of course I had nothing to say, for I merely marched on as one of the soldiers. I used to amuse myself, though, by making up differently each night, sometimes as an old man, till I got a calling down for exceeding the age limit in the army. After a while I was made assistant stage manager, which meant that I had to ring up the curtain and look after the stage properties; but all the same my salary stuck at that little eight dollars a week. I thought I deserved more, but I didn't like to ask for it.
"One night I heard Gillette say to somebody that he wished Miss Busby and Odette Tyler, the two leading women in the cast, wouldn't delay him by talking to him as he came off. He was always in a hurry to get to his dressing-room to work on some plot of a play he had in hand.
"'Send somebody to me with a request that I am wanted,' he added.